Subscribe to Breaking NewsWithers: Kramer thinks it too
Writer and activist Larry Kramer was asked to respond to Rupert Evert’s can of crazy. Go check out what Kramer has to say, but here is something that made my non-existent hair stand on end:
“I do not think the gay population has been all that rabid for gay marriage. Note that I do not use the words ‘gay community.’ Expunge that expression from your vocabulary. We are not a community. There are too many of us to qualify for that word, which connotes something much smaller and more intimate than the huge multipeopled grab bag of our rainbow coalition.”
When a certain UNC hoops fan voiced the exact same sentiment a few months ago, many of you acted like your mothers were called women of the streets. Hopefully you will share your anger with Kramer for having the gall to question the sacred term “gay community.” I’m doubting that will happen but isn’t this the season of dreams?
While I value Larry Kramer’s contributions, his time as a relevant voice for the LGBT community has passed. His is the generation that valued hedonism and used this as excuse for the sexual liberation of gay and women. All good and well but the gay community has now moved on. We have other things on our plate besides the AIDS crisis, ongoing as it is and of which Kramer was most vociferous. Yes, it is hard to peg all of us into one label–the gay community but make no mistake, we are still cohesive enough to come together and make a difference. When the rest of world stops caring about the labels that we carry and being gay is no different, then we will be just part of the human population.
Gay man,
Learn to read brother. Learn to read.
Sincerely,
James
James Withers is wrong. The article James mentions talks about how gay people are not affected by oppression. We are just imagining it according to James. Gay people across the globe for millennia have been oppressed in every area of life. We are in a monumental struggle for our freedom.
I think gay people have a community. Unfortunately gay people like James Withers and Rupert Everett ruin it because they carry heterosexuals’ water (heterosexual male hegemony/ heterosexual patriarchy). If gay people would ditch the heterosexual ideologies they were taught we would be light years ahead of where we are now.
I do think gay organizations can do better by being pro-gay instead of reenforcing haterosexual conventions. Gay people need to support each other.
Larry Kramer may soon be in line to join those who are trying to erase Gay and Lesbian community and culture and reduce it to sexual “cum-unity” as represented by the new acronyms MSM – Men who have Sex with Men and WSW – Women who have Sex with Women.
The fight to reduce GLBT people to anatomy and physiology, denying us a sense or our own culture and community, is like a cancer. We will watch it spread to the religious right at the same time it starts to take hold of sodden “intellectuals” like Kramer who are only too anxious, whether out of self-loathing or a misplaced sense of self-importance, to relegate their own people’s history and culture to the trash heap.
Well, I’ve relegated anything in my library by Mr. Kramer to the same heap already.
While Kramer did a lot of good with ActUp he has always had his own personal agenda for doing things.
One of typical rabid queens of the old Fire Island I so well remember.
His attitude always was, it should have been done yesterday and it’s my way or the highway.
Nice to see he hasn’t changed.
Now put him back in the retirement closet.
As usual he does not offer to step forward to take on the fight because it does not serve himself or his own agenda to do so.
Rather than expunging Gay Community from my vocabulary, until now, I expunged Larry Kramer from mine a very long time ago.
Thank you James! “Gay Community.” What a fluffy turd it is. The only thing I have in common with everybody gay is that we’re all gay. What the hell is this shite in some circles that would require anybody to come close to some oath of allegiance just because everybody in the room is attracted to somebody with the same naughty bits. To hell with that. I got more in common with plenty of other people than I do with most gay men.